Instead of writing another post I’ll just put some other thoughts here.

What we are in the middle of is a powershift.
The same thing happened in the music industry. Power shifted from the big labels to the artists themselves. Music artists can make more money doing everything themselves.
Not as much money as big labels pay. But big labels could only pay big money to a few people.

What’s going to happen to the video medium is the same thing.

Broadcast TV has barely survived cable. How are they going to win when everybody has a channel?

Everybody thinks that the broadcasters lost. They are not really lost. They are looking for liferafts that are not there.

the real people who are lost are the advertisers. They are going to have to have to fundementally change to survive. That’s the elephant on the right.

What you have to realize is that advertisers are lazy. So with this micro media world how do they quantify reach? How to they pay for ALL of these individual broadcasters? Today there is no platform for a personal content creator to create media on a regular basis, have it on a platform quantify traffic and create compelling and predictable enough value for an advertiser pay for it.

Your example of Rocketboom recently auctioned off its advertising space for $40k for a week’s worth of advertising on Ebay. Is this efficient? No. One 30 second spot each night during the week is at least $75k. So because of the disaggregated nature of this micromedia… there are too many inefficiencies of advertisers to adopt advertising in this media yet. And Google adwords as it is today isnt rich enough to replace traditional branding that these companies are seeking.

I watch from the sidelines of these discussions, and generally have to agree with the most of the ideas expressed.

That said, I think it is wrong to say that “advertisers are lazy”. What they REALLY are, like most people stuck in a business or lifestyle model that is outmoded, is simply risk averse. It’s always helpful to look at behaviour through a lens of how a professional (in this case advertiser’s or agency’s marketing manager) the potential collateral damage their career if they argue passionately for a new model. Most people opt for the safe choice…

And hence come the online networks if they are done right. Advertisers probably won’t go, nor care about the one hundred million blogs out there, but if they can optimmize their resources through a network that has a constant audience (gawker), then their money goes further.

The networks are the new “pimps” of the internet, taking on many sites, fitting them in categories and aggregating ads across the board. Personally, if I were an advertiser, Id rather see my ads go across many, if not all the sites on b5media rather than one populare like thesuperficial.com

And hence come the online networks if they are done right. Advertisers probably won’t go, nor care about the one hundred million blogs out there, but if they can optimmize their resources through a network that has a constant audience (gawker), then their money goes further.

The networks are the new “pimps” of the internet, taking on many sites, fitting them in categories and aggregating ads across the board. Personally, if I were an advertiser, Id rather see my ads go across many, if not all the sites on b5media rather than one populare like thesuperficial.com.

Do you serve your readers or do you serve your advertisers? One has to outweigh the other.

When I say advertisers are lazy I only mean that they would rather go to one source than deal with hundreds of little bloggers or video shows. Call it “efficient or cost effective” if you’d like. I say they want one solution to reach a bunch of people who are consuming this new media.

If it weren’t for google… the great majority of bloggers and labor of love sites would have no keywords to make pennies that they currently make.

Chart, do you know of something in the pipeline over at 9rules that we should be paying attention to?
Secondly, thesuperficial gets enough traffic that if they had video, they could compete with stuff like entertainment tonight, or access hollywood.

I think the proof will be if someone tries to come out w/a daily/weekly webcast/vlog that is a ful 42 minutes long. If that catches on I’d be surprised, the success in online video programming will definitely be the microchunk (create a series where each episode gets split across 5 days, if its good, it will get huge).

George Gilder proclaimed the exact same thing in his 1994 book Life After Television. This is not a new concept.

Our current Broadcast Television system evolved in the Industrial Age world of scarce Mass Media where content was expensive and difficult to produce and distribution was scarce and controlled.

Today in our Information Age world of abundant easy and cheap to produce content and abundant friction free direct to consumer distribution, it’s not surprising that the Broadcast TV will die. Where’s the value prop on either end (consumer and producer)?

Advertisers/Marketers have no choice….. Broadcast Television is dead! Mass Media is dead. The whole concept of “branding” mass appeal products to a mass audience is dead. Perhaps given the abundance of content choice, intrusive advertising is dead…

[…] Why Paul Scrivens Is Smarter Than Les Moonves nice and short post about tv vs. videoblogging…and what industry is next to feel the pain of the internet (tags: tv iptv video videoblog aweli advertising) […]

David said: Your example of Rocketboom recently auctioned off its advertising space for $40k for a week’s worth of advertising on Ebay. Is this efficient? No. One 30 second spot each night during the week is at least $75k.

Did Rocketboom increase their advertising revenue? If so I’d say that was damned efficient; an advertiser got a good deal and many $000,000 of the fluffy middle was trimmed. See Char’s last line.

I have recently started my own blog and it has generated my interest in other blogs. I came across this one tonight and happen to know a fair amount of information on the subject matter. Broadcast Networks will not die in our lifetime. However, they are evolving and morphing increasingly each day. Content is much cheaper to produce today than it was only a few years ago. I am involved in a project for a major network that involves narrow casting of smaller venues and smaller audiences. Similar to the example stated in this blog. It is not even broadcast over the air. As far as advertisers, I do not believe they are lazy but rather concerned with the demographics of the audience they are paying to get to. It really depends on your product and your target audience. The old term you get what you pay for is still alive and well. Just my thoughts.